The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-11-07
WOMEN WHO RIDE TIE TRICYCLE..
The Seasons of the Year Best Suited for
the Machines.
lCopU-igh ted, 1887

> New YORK, Nov. "a representative of
one of the big bicycle houses told me the
other day that he was rather expecting an
order to build a tricycle. for Mrs. Cleveland.
The first lady in the land lisa proficient with
+be wheel and used to enjoy the exercise
Immensely, making fine records in her
schoolgirl and college days. though she gets
little opportunity at present to practice the
arcompiishmept WASHINGTON streets are
DELIGHTFULLY."- wide and smooth and she looks
wistfully al times upon the ladies gliding
about on their noiseless wheels in the perfect
autumn days that we have had Her appear
ance in like guise would be the signal or the
assembling of a mob OF lockers on and dig
oitv has thus far forbade the spectacle
President Cleveland too, who used to be
sturdy if not a skilled rider in Buffalo and
Albany, is stranger to the wheel in Wash
ington.
with the example of the President and
his wife to encourage the tmid and irreso-
Int. with the spreading conviction that the
snort is a fiue one and the exercise benef-
cial, with fashion making up her mind to
favor the new pastime, modisteS bending
their energies to devise pretty gowns for it
and host of escorts of the sex masculine
enthusiastically praising it, there is no won
der, perhaps that the number of women
riders of the tricycle. in the country has i'll
sentative estimate. There are already be-
tween 1000 and 5000 confirmed feminine
devotees of the habit, and the proportion of
increase in the number Of riders is at present
greater among women than among men
This is true the country over, but especially
true in New York, where tricycling has
leaped into sudden fame since Central Park
was thrown open to wheelmen.
There is well-known lady who lives in
II.,lo,,, hnp1 tho ba hit1laS Of Cpitr.al aIx
are quite used to seeing wheeling along its
drives at certain hours Of the day. Every
pleasant morning she mounts a tandem
tricycle. with her husband. Together they
wheel the machine to the lower end of the
Park, where he leaves her to make her way
home alone while he goes on to his days
work. Toward nightfall she wheels the
tricycle. down again to meet him and they
ride pleasantly back together in the crisp
autumnal twilight over a brown carpet Of
fallen leaves.
Washington, Hartford and Rochester
caught the tricycling mania first and have
been the paradise of wheelwomen. In Wash
ington it is not an uncommon spectacle for
Senator's wife to pay call on tricycle.
instead of in carriage, or for stald and
sedate matron to carry the spoil of a shop
ping expedition home in her luggage
carrier" In Hartford the entire group of
literati is infected with cyclomania. In
Rochester, Buffalo and Chicago sensible use
of the wheel is made by hundreds of women
Even Boston includes in its mani
fold culture the culture of wheel
craft New York, which sets the
fashions in many frivolities, follies, and ex-
travagances has hitherto Jagged behind in
this sensible sport, and now seems to be
hurying to catch up. Perhaps the fashion
able revival of interest in athletics and semi
athletics cannot last, bul it is here now and
girls are making the most of it.
There was party of eight who toured it
on their wheels as far as Saratoga this
summer. There were three couples, husband
and wife, on tandem tricycles and two
unattended ladies on singles. They had the
best of sport and the reddest of cheeks to
bring back to New York. A Boston touring
party covered some 500 miles at about the
same time. It's numbers varied somewhat
from day to day, but there were usually
about eleven ladies along on tandems or
single machines. One woman who went the
whole 500 miles declared that she felt much
better at the five-hundredth than at the
first. .....
A New York artist of repute has been
spending October and the early November
days with his wife touring on tandem
tricycle. on Long Island and the pair will
not return to the city until the last of the
bright autumn foliage has faded. They have
taken with them a sketch book, water and
oil colors each and are making studies of
leaf tints for winter work i'll the studio
The tandem is an accommodating machine
that doesn't complain against hand satchel
swung beneath for little necessary luggage,
and the country farm houses have barns
where the machine may be stored at night
and beds where the jolly tourists may sleep.
TGr number of lady members of the cy-
cling cubs is growing, and those institutions
are planting themselves everywhere along
the parkside where a woman may call, get
her wheel, trundle it into the smooth park
ways, enjoy an hour or two of exhilarating
exercise, and return it to cover again with
out long journey over paved streets and
jolting cobbleStones The wheel for women
has come to the city to stay, and within
three months the sight of woman on a
wheel has grown so common that 1t ceases
to provoke a single "Hi! HIP from the
observant street gamin
For two people the tandem tricycle. has
almost entirely displaced the sociable. In
the sociable the riders sit side by side. The
masculine propeller of the tandem sits be-
hind his partner and looks over her shoulder.
When she is tired she stops working; one
pair of feet make tolerably easy work of
propulsion on level ground.
The process of improving the tricycle. has
gone pretty far. At present there are a
VI IlAdkclS Uil1b OHCi q SOOu
for all purposes nearly as fast as bicycle;
quite as fast indeed, if it be a tandem with
two skilled riders There is even practic-
able water tricycle. which a Jerseyman has
patented and which a New York man is
going to manufacture. and there are several
inventors who are ambitiously proposing to
run cycles by steam, so that the riders will
have nothing at all to do but steer 1t is to
be hoped they won't succeed. The work of
trundling tricycle. is its chief value from
a hygienic point Of view. A steam tricycle.
may be practicable and is probably among
the things that are to be, but it will be even
more unromantic than steam yacht when
compared with the genuine thing.
The fair tricyclist has as good chance to
wear pretty gowns as the tennis players and
she is as apt to make use of them. The
aesthetic cold gravy-colored breeches of the
masculine wheelmen, their natty caps and
ribbed and sometimes stuffed stockings have
proved very effective indeed on parade, but
equally fine effects can be produced in the
garb of the feminine cycler OF course the
dress must be loose and yet not baggy, the
skirt scant and of walking length the blouse
Of any pretty cut, the stockings dark, the
shoes low cut and fitted with rubber soles
"A Jaunty cap upon the head and the outfit
is completed In England where cycling is
something like five times as popular as here,
partly because the roads are so much better
and partly because aristocracy, with the
family of the Prince of Wales at its head,
has led the way in it, the divided skirt is
h,af &c